Written by Alyssa Haney, iACT Outreach and Partnership Specialist, with Sherri Mowry, iACT ESL Instructor.

Walking into Sherri’s classroom, I was greeted by laughter and smiles on the faces of the six women in attendance that day. They touched each other’s arms and helped each other complete thoughts, cheering each other on when able to form a beautiful sentence in English. Sherri is iACT’s pre-literacy teacher, working with individuals with little to no background in formal education or English.

Although the women spent most of the time I visited smiling, they are faced with innumerable challenges as refugees learning English in America. The most far-reaching challenge Sherri discussed was that of identity. Most of her students are coming from cultures radically different than that of Austin. Especially for the female students, time speeds up dramatically once they reach the United States. Much more is expected of them, and they interact with far more environments and people than ever before. Sherri focuses most of her lessons on cultivating confidence in her students to deal with these changes. She has noticed that assertiveness is a characteristic far more valued in America than elsewhere. To get what you need in America, you often have to directly ask for it in a confident voice, even in seemingly small, daily actions, such as asking directions from a bus driver or ordering food at a supermarket.

These lessons of confidence prove difficult not only for the students, however. Sherri expressed her internal struggle to provide her students the skills they need to survive in the U.S. without pressuring them to act in a way that goes against their cultural beliefs. She strives to make sure her students understand that, sometimes, we have to present one attitude externally to ensure our needs are met, but this does not always mean that is who we are deep inside.

Sherri also stressed that the cultural exchanges are always reciprocal in her classroom. For Sherri, and many of her volunteers, the students act as a mirror of sorts, allowing the instructors to check their privilege and their assumptions about what the correct way to act is. Sherri has particularly learned the importance of humility and patience from her students. She wishes everyone could get to know her students, so that they may, as she so poetically worded, “see the beauty of which the human spirit is capable.”